54 , ll\/1 [\1\) I 1 ' --- ' " ) t!D called All Children Together, which is working for unsegregated education in Ulster, was refused permission to use a Catholic church hall for a meet- ing. It is, by and large, the Catholic Church that insists on separate educa- tion, and in many cases the Catholic clergy are prepared to back up the insistence with threats to Catholic par- ents of hellfire and purgatory; but un- doubtedly the segregation has the sup- port of many Protestant ministers and teachers. One young Catholic woman who taught for a while in a Belfast state school did so under an assumed name and without telling her col- leagues she was Catholic. After she left and the truth came out, there was a great uproar; several teachers said they would have objected to her presence among them if they had known. The system tends to perpetuate two somewhat archaic visions of citizenry and loyalty. Teachers go to training colleges run by the state or by the Catholic Church, and intellectual bor- der-crossing is not encouraged. Catholic schools teach the Irish language and promote a nationalist Irish allegiance. Protestant schools exalt the binding tie with Britain. Both visions obscure the fact that Catholics in Northern Ireland ha ve not voted with their feet to move . ""; 6 , . . to Southern Ireland (where economic opportunities and social benefits are fewer), and that Ulster Protestants also feel a very strong attachment to their country-they are at once Irish and British. Although the Gaelic natives of Ireland (the descendants of aboriginal Irish and of Celtic invaders) have been infiltrated by Vikings, Normans, Scots, and English over a good twelve hundred years, and some Anglo-Irish families date their arrival in Ireland to the twelfth century, roughly a cen- tury after the N"orman conquest of England, the popular view in North- ern Ireland is that anyone from the British Isles to the east is an invader- particularly those people who came from Scotland, full of the fire of the Reformation, in the seventeenth cen- tury. The fact is, though, that some of the Scots-including many of Gaelic descent-who settled in Ulster before the Mayflower reached America were Catholic. Cromwell, infamous in Ire- land, was equally ruthless to Scotch Presbyterians and Irish Catholics, and he also expelled all Anglican clergymen from their Irish parishes in order to install his own men. Protestant Ulster- men have led political campaigns for Irish independence. Protestant Irish of English ancestry fomented rebellions in the South against British rule. . , , " IBAÑ )I # J< I.. oOÞMA Yet the simplified view of history has its effect, and, whatever the lines that have been crossed in the past, under- mining generalizations, there is no doubt that the lines are now distinct, and often take the form of barricades. Intermarriage between English and Irish was possible before the Reforma- tion. With those who have arrived since, particularly those from Scotland (despite their own Gaelic ancestry), little mIxing has occurred; the two tribes have grown apart. There are Catholic names, like Seamus Murphy and Sean Flanagan, and Protestant names, like Ian Forsythe and David Simmons. Dunne with an "e" is Cath- olic, without it Protestant. (Anthony Trollope entitled a book "The Kellys and the O'Kellys.") The segregation has gone on for so long it has be- come genetic. Or, at any rate, Ulster people can recognIze Catholic features and Protestant features: differences in shape of eye, height of cheekbones, color of hair. Sandy hair like Mat- thew Ferguson's is Protestant, car- roty red is Catholic. Protestant men have a confident swagger, Catholic men a lighter, jauntier step. Catholics are smaller. Protestants have conspicu- ous shoulders. In Belfast, moreover, the locals can, with a Henry Higgins- like precision, relate accent to home